


Cause and Effect

by GretchenSinister



Series: My Top 10 Blacksand Kinkmeme Fics [4]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: M/M, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:42:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23035705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GretchenSinister/pseuds/GretchenSinister
Summary: Original Prompt: "Sandy’s sick, and that means his dream powers are running wild. While his friends try to take care of him (and to keep his malfunctioning powers from affecting the human world), they have to deal with their own dreams coming to life around them, and blurring the lines between dreams and reality- that means good dreams, bad dreams, silly dreams, (and maybe even wet dreams), all manifesting during their waking hours and wreaking havoc.This can go anywhere the filler likes, I just thought it’d be fun to see all the chaos @w@"Sandy was only trying to warp reality a little bit. Now Pitch has to control the dreamsand. Or at least give it something to focus on. This may make more sense with a rudimentary understanding of thermodynamics.
Relationships: Pitch Black/Sanderson Mansnoozie
Series: My Top 10 Blacksand Kinkmeme Fics [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1654639
Kudos: 31
Collections: Blacksand Short Fics





	Cause and Effect

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on Tumblr on 6/10/2013.

Jack Frost curled up in a chair in the corner of the sickroom, watching Pitch as warily as he could between massive yawns. Like the rest of the Guardians, he hadn’t slept in days. Ever since things had started to get…weird…they had all agreed that they should stay awake until the problem was solved.

It had all started small enough. A picture of a mountain being replaced with a picture of a racehorse. Someone finding that their old blue shirt was now their favorite shade of purple. Keys, phones, and remotes getting moved to improbable places (like inside unopened cans of soda). Then, bigger things started changing. Eggs were cracked and only music came out. Apple trees grew overnight from city flowerboxes. Golden eagles were spotted flying over ordinary suburban towns, but in pictures they appeared to have not the bodies of birds but rather those of small lions. UFO reports went up one hundred thousand percent. Very reliable photos of the Loch Ness monster were suddenly appearing on the internet. Someone tried to shoot a mermaid off the Florida coast but as he went to pull the trigger the firearm turned into a knitted model of a gun. Previously stolid, reliable, rectangular buildings suddenly acquired more than four right angles. Almost everything that wasn’t supposed to have wings gained them in at least a few cases. A mare gave birth to a centaur. Strange and beautiful people wandered the streets until they found the person they were looking for, and they would then, in many cases, begin making love right in the open. Bafflingly, the strangers were never found when increasingly harried police showed up to arrest the couples for public indecency.

It became increasingly rare for people to go outside, even for supplies. After all, even if one’s house retained its door, there was no way of knowing whether or not the street would run to the store or if it would suddenly turn into an alley in Bruges or Cairo. The TV might well turn out to be chocolate, anyway, or a book might reveal itself to be a prime steak.

And over all of this, a faint golden glimmer fell, though not everyone could see it. Then again, most had more pressing concerns.

“Sandy is sick,” North had said, after his call had only summoned Toothiana, Bunny, and Jack to the Workshop. “Dreamsand is out of control. Did not know it could get this bad, but there you have it. We need to get it under control before the world falls apart.”

“What do we do?” Toothiana asked. “None of us know anything about treating someone like Sandy. If we could control the dreamsand, we could just let him rest, but the only person we know who ever managed to control dreamsand other than Sandy was Pitch.”

“Yes. So we will get Pitch.”

“But he tried to kill Sandy!” Jack interrupted.

“That is why when we get Pitch, we will watch him in rotation. Keep him from doing anything else but keep dreamsand from reaching humans. Will work. He is weak now.”

“He’s going to say no,” Bunny said dourly.

“Look, we will get his cooperation one way or another, da? Anything is better than end of world.”

“Could Sandy’s powers really do that?” Jack asked.

Tooth nodded. “I think so. I mean, we can’t know for sure, since it never happened, obviously, but for him there’s not a really bright line between dreams and reality. A little power imbalance, and everything that makes reality real starts to fail. You think the mermaids were dramatic? Well, the real problems are showing up with seemingly smaller things. My fairies have seen cake batter unmix itself. A cup of cold water placed next to a mug of lukewarm coffee froze solid while the coffee heated up again.”

* * *

When they showed up at Pitch’s lair, he was holding a message from the Guardians. “Are you serious about asking for my help?”

“You sent the message?” Bunny asked North.

“No, I was going to send it tomorrow!” North shook his head. “You see Pitch! Is very bad. Effect coming before cause.”

Pitch frowned. “You know I’ll only be doing this out of a sense of self-preservation.”

“Not important,” Bunny said, ushering Pitch towards the snowglobe portal that led to Dreamland.

* * *

And that was how Jack had ended up where he was, struggling to stay awake on a plush golden armchair while Pitch sat next to Sandy’s bed. The air was thick with dreamsand, kept within the room by a swarm of small nightmares running and flying around the walls and windows that somehow repelled the sand back into the room, or changed it back into ordinary sand, or just plain made more tiny nightmares with it. It was strange, but Pitch hadn’t done anything explicitly threatening yet. The only problem was that he insisted on sitting so close to Sandy. He wasn’t even doing anything for him! If he was just going to control the dreamsand with nightmares, why didn’t he just sit in the middle of the room? It seemed very suspicious to Jack.

During a particularly drawn-out yawn of Jack’s, Pitch leaned down and smoothed fever-damp hair away from Sandy’s forehead. Sandy leaned into his cool touch and Pitch smiled. “Do you think you can send Jack to sleep?” he whispered in Sandy’s ear. Sandy nodded and some of the dreamsand above Jack suddenly condensed and fell into his hair. He fell asleep instantly, leaning off the chair awkwardly, but not awkwardly enough that he would fall off.

Pitch nodded, and ran a hand along Sandy’s cheek. “It’s been beautiful, you know. Tooth will probably try to make them forget everything, but it has been beautiful. No one’s going to want for believers for generations. That was what you wanted, wasn’t it?” Sandy nodded weakly. “Even though you knew such things would be fearful as well as wondrous?” Sandy opened his eyes fully and smiled at Pitch.

Of course. Why did he think he had broken the boundary in the first place?

“But you overdid it. You didn’t have enough power to stop what you started.”

But you do. You are.

“I’m just containing the dreamsand. I can’t stop it. Unless you tell me how, which I doubt you will.”

You can still help me.

* * *

Pitch carried Sandy down to the beach, his head resting on his shoulder. Sandy told him that the waters of Dreamland would help cool his fever, and Pitch was even more aware how necessary that was as he held Sandy. The little dreamweaver felt like a furnace in his arms. Which was admittedly somewhat fascinating to someone who ordinarily spent most of his time in a cool cave…Pitch set Sandy on the shore, dismissing his train of thought.

With no apparent sense of embarrassment, Sandy removed his pajamas and began to wade into Dreamland’s sea.

“S-Sandy? What exactly are you going to tell Jack if he wakes up?”

Won’t wake up until I say. If he did, might say you were trying to have me drown by letting me go in the water alone while I’m sick.

“You want me to come in with you?”

Sandy looks back at Pitch, nodding slowly, his face expressing disbelief that Pitch had to ask the question.

“Fine. But don’t do anything that would make it difficult for me to control the nightmares that are keeping your sand in check.”

Sandy smiled slowly, with a gleam of more than fever in his eyes.

What did you have in mind? I’m not sure I follow you.

“Sandy, no. First of all, you know very well. Second of all, I thought you made it very clear to me that that ship had sailed.”

Sandy shrugged and grabbed Pitch’s hand as he waded deeper.

That was dependent on you not always being an ass. You’re not being an ass now, so reevaluation is possible.

“Oh. Well. All right then.”

Sandy floats easily, and soon they have waded out enough so that their faces are almost level.

“Now what?”

Think there’s a way to stop the dreamsand from meddling with humans. Problem is normal dreamweaving needs focus split thousands of times. Just need to get it to focus on one thing for a while.

“One thing such as?”

You.

The dreamsand around them began to coalesce into tendrils that lightly brushed across Pitch’s face.

A purple blush rose to Pitch’s cheeks. “There’s a lot of dreamsand around us right now.”

Are you afraid?

“No. But I don’t know if I’m rational.”

That’s all right. This is Dreamland.

Sandy swam close to Pitch, linked his fingers behind his neck, and pressed a burning kiss to his throat.

* * *

There was a lot of yelling when Bunny arrived to take on Pitch watching duty and found Jack sound asleep. There was more yelling when Sandy was found on the beach, wrapped primarily in Pitch’s cloak and secondarily in Pitch.

But that was all right. It just proved that cause and effect were in working order again.


End file.
